We've pulled out the fibre cables connecting DR building to the main site, so everyone who is working (very few) can carry on uninhibited whilst we "try" to get a working DR scenario in this separate building.

When performing instant recovery, every VM tries to contact the default host that it was running on at the time of backup, which takes ~2 minutes to timeout when it can't find it (which in disaster it's unlikely to).

Could it be changed so that the wizard just goes straight to the dialog page that asks which host to restore to, like it does after it has timed out, then we don't sit waiting for every VM to time out? It can default the selection box to the original host, and if we make no changes then it tries the validation connect after we hit next, but it allows us to pick a DR host first this way.

When performing instant recovery, every VM tries to contact the default host that it was running on at the time of backup, which takes ~2 minutes to timeout when it can't find it (which in disaster it's unlikely to).

How do you typically initiate Instant VM Recovery? If you go to Backups node -> select necessary VM -> right-click on it -> choose Instant VM Recovery. In this case, the third page of the wizard should provide you with two options: Restore to original location and Restore to a new location.

Only if you select the former option, should the wizard try to establish connection to original host.

When you choose "Restore to a new location or with different settings" it pops up "Loading VM Data" for 25 seconds then "Retrieving <host> configuration" for about 2 minutes before timing out and giving us the "Destination" dialog page - where Host is defaulting to the original host.

I just quickly tried the route you suggested (Backups > VM > Right click) in case it was different; it appears to be the same but I'm back on the live side of my environment at the moment, so it is successfully seeing and loading the old host.

Could it be changed so that the wizard just goes straight to the dialog page that asks which host to restore to, like it does after it has timed out, then we don't sit waiting for every VM to time out?

It cannot be changed immediately, existing mechanism will stay as is in the upcoming release. However, we might revise the functionality down the road.